Buenos días from Hunter Hill! I love to get above the city, and this is one of my favorite spots to see the city from a different perspective. I didn’t get the chance to take HULA 2024 up here, so I decided to document it with pictures and words for them, and also for you. Some of you have been up here with me before, so for you I hope this is a helpful reminder of our shared prayer in Arequipa. 

My first Mother’s Day in Peru (as a mother, see the picture below), our neighbors, Pedro and Frecia, invited us to spend the day with them because they knew we didn’t have family here and wanted to share that with us. Because of the generosity we were shown that day, I wanted to pass it on. So, this Mother’s Day I wanted to have a full table and I knew if I cooked food, they would come. So I cooked a meal and we invited anyone that was a part of our church meeting to stay and eat with us. Those who don’t have a mother living or who don’t live near family ended up staying and eating and we shared the afternoon around the table.

Since 2019, a significant part of our lives and work in Arequipa has revolved around our role as directors of Harding University Latin America. Once a year, we receive 15-30 students to live and learn with us for three months. As HULA 2024 drew closer to the end, a lot of our “top moments” came to mind—and there’s a lot of those! A first tour where our eyes are open to tragic history at Espacio Memoria in Buenos Aires. Hiking one of the world’s most beautiful trails—Fitz-Roy to Laguna de los Tres in El Chalten. Walking on the Perito Moreno glacier or navigating the Beagle Channel and hiking in Tierra del Fuego National Park at the world’s southernmost tip until you see some penguins. There’s sandboarding on the dunes of Paracas and watching the sun set in the desert. There’s waking up in the Colca Valley and realizing you’re in one of the most beautiful places on earth. There’s fishing for piranhas in the vast Amazon rainforest in all its breathtaking diversity. There’s walking an ancient path all the way to Machu Picchu’s original entrance so that the Inca sanctuary becomes your classroom. And there's HULA's final trip, traveling to the most remote inhabited landmass on earth, Rapa Nui, and learning what it means to be human through the lens of that incredible history and culture. 

This fall I met with a good friend of mine who has connections to everyone in the city (it seems like) and she said, “Katie, I think we should do a Bible study at the women’s prison.” She also has a way of dragging me into all her plans…or God has a way of using her to push me out of my comfort zone.I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect but I agreed to do it. We went together to the prison to meet with the director of the prison and got things set up so that in November we began a six-week study with a group of 48 women. 

The last three months have been intense. In particular, Katie has been doing really special work. In October she went to the Connections conference in Brazil, visited our house church’s missionary in a mountain community of Apurimac, and worked in a medical campaign in Cusco. Between those things we hosted an alumni group as part of Harding’s celebration of 100 years. All of that led into an incredible November. She got to go to two of four sessions of a personal finance course that Paty did with a group called Féminas, a group of women with tough lives, most of whom are sex workers. Katie and Paty have been building relationships with them over the last couple years, and at the end of the personal finance class the women suggested a Bible study as a next step. See more below in the article about CUDA and please pray for that opportunity!

We moved! Our big news from the last few weeks is that we moved to a new neighborhood in the district of Sachaca. October was a whirlwind, and on the 31st, the same day that our kids got to trick-or-treat for the first time ever, we moved a couple miles away from where we’ve been for the last 8.5 years. The month and a half we’ve been here so far have been full of affirmation that we made the right decision, and I ask for your prayers as we start to share life and faith in a new part of the city.

There are two videos I want to include right here. We’ve written thousands of words this year to try to share what our lives look like, but a video has the capacity to capture the feel of something. My friend Mark Slagle of 1504 Pictures visited us in March and shot an incredible amount of footage. His creative work resulted in two videos. One shows the spark of life that Living Libraries brings into communities in Arequipa as we train teachers. The other tells the story about our approach to study abroad through HULA, as well as visuals from one of our favorite places in the world, the Colca Valley. 

One of the great honors of my last 9 years in Arequipa (!!) is to be connected with the Christian Urban Development Association. It’s not often that there is such a tangible move from faith to action, executed in a such a thoughtful, impactful way. A theology of the inbreaking kingdom of God is beautiful. It sounds like Jesus in the Nazareth synagogue, talking about good news to the poor, freedom for the incarcerated, healing to the oppressed. Because there is something about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that means good news for us—right now!—as we wait for the renewal of all things.

In two weeks we celebrate 9 years in Arequipa. We are deeply thankful for your love, support, and prayers, and ever more aware of God’s presence toward goodness and healing and peace in the midst of a chaotic and broken city.

Over the last few months I’ve used our fortnightly CUDA team meetings to discuss our way through one of CUDA's founding documents, about what we believe about the kingdom of God, development and wellbeing, and how to be active agents of change who reflect the ways of Jesus.

I sit here in my favorite spot on the couch in my apartment overlooking the incredible and vast city lights, writing this and eating my dinner of bread and avocado at 10pm at night. I am alone but on a high from a great evening of climbing with friends and I am hit with waves of emotions as my mind is flooded with so many memories from this past year. There were difficult and challenging times but also new experiences and life giving moments.

When we tried to get back to Arequipa to prepare for our HULA group’s arrival, the airport was still shut down because of the protests which had reignited. This time they had shut down food and gas supplies to the city, which led us to make the decision to start HULA 2023 in Buenos Aires (Argentina). It was an inordinate amount of work to pull that off (and made possible because of my amazing friend Jonathan Hanegan), but pull it off we did and we launched into an incredible semester with an amazing group of students, for whom we are so thankful. By the time we got to Arequipa on February 20, things were mostly back to normal and we launched into a special time of travel, learning, and connection with a place, a people, its history and culture, designed to form us interculturally and grow spiritually.